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Press Release: Bancolombia and Terrapay Sign Contract to Strengthen Cross-Border Remittances Across Colombia
As part of their collective commitment to enhance financial inclusion, the two companies will enable seamless cross-border transfers.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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In Pursuit of a Cashless Africa: Learning from Nigeria’s Struggle to Accelerate its Transition to Digital Finance
The use of cash for payments is dwindling globally, while the electronic payments industry is burgeoning. As Osahon Akpata at Ecobank points out, this growth is also happening in Africa, though cash still remains king. He highlights several factors that are driving both the growth of digital finance and the ongoing usage of cash on the continent, exploring how African countries can accelerate their transition to a cashless economy — and what they can learn from Nigeria's struggles in that area.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology, Telecommunications
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Does Universal Basic Income Really Work? Understanding the Early Findings from the World’s Largest UBI Experiment, and Their Implications for Financial Resilience
While the concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a poverty solution has been widely debated, there has been limited evidence of its effectiveness. But as Tavneet Suri at MIT and Stella Klemperer at Flourish Ventures explain, that's beginning to change. They share early results from a 12-year randomized control trial exploring the long-term impact of UBI on 23,000 people in 195 villages in rural Kenya — the largest and longest UBI experiment to-date. The findings offer compelling evidence of UBI's impact on financial resilience, and can help inform the design of other UBI and cash transfer programs.
- Categories
- Finance
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Press Release: IFC Grants Loan to Caja Los Héroes to Promote Financial Inclusion in Chile
This new financing seeks to further boost the growth and expansion of Caja Los Héroes' social credit framework.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Latin America
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Wrap-Around Services Are Changing the Face of Microfinance – For the Better: New Research Shows the Impact of Going Beyond Credit
While loans have always been at the heart of microfinance, credit alone is often not enough to create meaningful impact. To address this, many providers offer additional wrap-around services — from training and health support to savings, insurance and payment solutions — aimed at increasing the impact of their loans. Devin Olmack at 60 Decibels shares findings from 60 Decibels' 2023 Microfinance Index, based on conversations with over 32,000 borrowers across 32 countries, that show the increasing need for a spectrum of services that go beyond microcredit.
- Categories
- Finance
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Understanding Digital Public Infrastructure: What it Means — and Why it Matters — to Businesses and Governments in Emerging Markets
In recent months, there has been an outpouring of media coverage and analysis on the topic of digital public infrastructure (DPI). David Porteous, Priya Vora, Ravi Shankar Chaturvedi and Peter Rabley explore the ongoing efforts to develop a shared understanding of what DPI means, and how it can impact global digital development. They urge DPI stakeholders to look beyond narrow, government-centered use cases and existing digital systems to envision next-generation applications based on public and private sector collaboration.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Citi Grants $6 Million in Debt to Colombian Fintech Sempli
This transaction falls under the Scaling Enterprise program, backed by the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and the Ford Foundation.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Latin America
- Tags
- financial inclusion, fintech, lending, MSMEs
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Using AI to Transform Impact Measurement: Overcoming Language Barriers in Global Development Research
Language and cultural barriers often create a “listening divide” between the providers and beneficiaries of global development programs. According to Daryl Collins and Pravarakya Reddy Battula at Decodis, these barriers make it difficult to develop effective anti-poverty solutions — and artificial intelligence (AI) can play a key role in addressing them. They discuss how Decodis is using AI technology to facilitate survey data collection and analysis in its poverty alleviation research, and highlight the role human intelligence must still play in guiding these efforts.
- Categories
- Technology
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